[Sca-cooks] SPIROL CUT HAM

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Stefan li Rous:
>Adamantius said:
>>  I'm in the mood for seafood. I have
>>  some large tins of scungilli (one of the better forms of canned
>>  seafood; at least, closer to the fresh article than most)
>
>And what is this "scungilli"? Is it a particular type of fish? of
>seafood? or is it a variety of things prepared a special way?

Scungilli is an Italian name for what in English are known as knobbed
whelk. Largeish sea snails similar to conch and abalone (although not
as sweet as abalone), with a shell generally running about four
inches long. You can get them fresh/live, or frozen, shelled, or
shelled, fully cooked, and sliced, in cans. They have a slightly
rubbery texture when improperly cooked; like octopus or squid they
should either be cooked very quickly or long and slowly.

They taste pretty much like escargots, actually. I like their texture
when properly cooked, a sort of rich, chunky tenderness, less fibrous
than many clams, but still sort of firmly tender, almost like the
firmer pressed bean curds.

A common Southern Italian and frequent Italian-American preparation
for them involves sauteeing them a la marinara, which in Italy is
very similar to the French forms, except for the tomatoes. (Yes, this
is marinara sauce, but the real thing never comes in jars.) You saute
garlic in olive oil, add a splash of white wine, some chopped
tomatoes (ideally, peeled, seeded raw plum tomatoes),  maybe a tiny
bit of oregano (basil is highly overrated in this context), season
with salt and pepper, some optional red pepper flakes, and lots of
chopped parsley. I like to add a few more drops of olive oil at the
end of the cooking process; there's a difference between the product
cooked and the fresh, raw stuff. If you're using canned tomatoes,
some people will advise you to cook this a long time, which you
really don't want to do because it screws up the fresh flavors of the
wine, the herbs, and the oil, but it _does_ keep the tomatoes from
being sour. Some people add sugar. Bleah.  I solve this with a _tiny_
(less than 1/8 tsp.) pinch of baking soda, which bubbles up, eats the
acid, and leaves only salt behind. (You then adjust the seasoning
with salt, anyway.) If you're using fresh raw tomatoes, you can cook
this in under five minutes and you won't have to worry. This does not
thicken by reduction; the sauce is supposed to remain chunky and
thicken as it boils and emulsifies with the olive oil.

This is a fairly basic marinara sauce: French preparations a la
mariniere generally involve shallots or garlic, white wine, olive
oil, salt, pepper, and parsley. This was essentially what the mussels
we had at 12th Night were steamed in.

In both cases you make this preparation, then lay out whatever
seafood you have (shrimp, clams, squid, either pounded/tenderized or
precooked octopus, scungilli, etc.) on top, and either saute or
quickly steam, covered. Fin fish such as cod is good this way, too.

In the case of canned scungilli, there is a flavorful juice in the
can which I reduce at the beginning of the sauce-making process, then
add the scungilli later, just to reheat.


>  > which I may
>>  saute in a vaguely Provencale (olive oil, tomatoes, garlic, white
>>  wine, herbs,  a caper and/or an olive or two) sauce, and serve it
>>  with saffron rice.
>
>Sounds wonderful. Since the scungilli is canned, is it already
>cooked, so you just saute it or warm it up?

Yes, see above.

>  > I also have a 5-lb box of frozen whole prawns,
>
>When you say "whole", do you mean with the head? Do you cut off
>the head? shell the shrimp?

These ones are farmed, and so fairly clean, so I would leave them
whole. Just as with crayfish, which, while strictly speaking have
their main meat in the tail, there is a lot of flavor (and some meat,
too) in the head structure. People actually pay extra for prawns with
the heads still on.

The whole prawn actually also has the advantage of keeping the juice
inside the shell, for a moister and more flavorful product. Remember
all the fun you had with lobsters in January? Had they been shelled
and fried or sauteed (one _can_ do this, but it's a pain), the
product would have been very different.

>  > which could end up sauteed with mondo garlic and olive oil,
>>  essentially sauced with a shrimp-flavored bagna cauda. For this I
>>  would prolly just serve bread and salad.
>>
>>  I also have a wheel of rabbit sausage in there... hmmm. Maybe with
>>  roasted onions and applesauce?
>
>All this sounds good. A "wheel" of rabbit sausage? I thought sausages
>were done in links. This is the first I've heard of a shape other
>than a link, or cross-sections from a link or just loose sausage
>resembling simple ground meat.

This was a time-saving expedient. You stuff about 2.5 lbs of the meat
into casings, then instead of tying it off into links, you just tie
off the ends, then roll the stuffed gut into a spiral shape. Some
people then skewer these with bamboo skewers, but I didn't bother.
Bingo - you have eight servings of sausage, approximately. These were
left over from an event I was involved with a couple of weeks ago.

As it happens, She Who Must Be Obeyed and He Who Must Be Obeyed,
Junior, requested red meat ("What, no lamb???"), so I thawed out a
couple of the Omaha Strip Steaks that mysteriously appear in our
freezer each and every Christmas, which I tend to ignore as I don't
like them very much, and augmented them with a regular frozen shell
steak from the supermarket (which was better, freezer burn and all).
I unearthed, also, some leftover gravy from a recent but previous
usage, and poured it over mushrooms (reconstituted dried Chinese
black mushrooms, shredded) sauteeing in the pan.  I also smashed some
spuds with garlic, butter, and just a drop of white truffle oil,
boring broccoli spears and a brunoise salad of carrots, cucumbers,
celery and yellow peppers, in sherry vinaigrette. Fun with knives...

Adamantius (who made off with the regular shell steak, which was good)